kathy escobar.

let’s be friends. oh wait, we don’t know how to!

Posted on Jan 24, 2012 in equality, ex good christian women, healing, incarnational, leadership, relationships, spiritual formation | 7 comments

“there is nothing on this earth to be more prized than true friendship.”

- st. thomas aquinas

remember that book, “all i ever needed i learned in kindergarten”? sure, some of what we learned when we were five would be helpful to us as grownups. but i’m also going to make a supposition that even by age five, weird friendship stuff may have already seeped in. some boys stop playing so freely with girls. the power dynamics of who rules the playground kick into full swing. cliques form. the weak are often already culled out. it looks different for everyone, and there’s no question we are a lot purer when we are five than when we are 35, but the same fact remains–friendship is hard!

cultivating healthy, strengthening, encouraging, equal friendships is an art, not science. and a very lost art at that.

in fact, i feel quite sure an honest poll would reveal that most people don’t have the kinds of friendships they long for. that most don’t really know how to do them in a way that works long-term. that some feel as inadequate now as we did when we were in junior high, even though they fake it better. that many don’t even know what healthy friendship is supposed to look or feel like. and that it seems there’s never enough time to develop them. i am also going to take a leap and say that in the christian world, it’s even worse. there are countless other weird dynamics at play in christian friendships that even further complicate what’s already complicated.

i know the feeling. i used to stink at real friendship. i’ve always had a lot of friends. i am a loyal person and have always hung on to friends–both male & female–through thick and thin. but it wasn’t until i was in my late 20′s that i started to become comfortable enough in my own skin to actually be the kind of friend i wanted. the kind that receives instead of just giving. the kind that is honest & raw instead of holding back all the time. the kind that makes a really concerted effort to nurture the relationship instead of expecting it to drop out of the sky.

18 years later, I’m still learning. it’s not the easiest thing for me to do. at heart, i like independence, not interdependence.

and real friendship requires interdependence.

a give-and-take. grace. intention. vulnerability. risk.

in church, we are taught a lot about believing, knowing, and worshiping certain things and acting certain ways. even now, with a lot of focus on missional living emerging in many churches, which i think is a good thing, a crucial ingredient is usually often missing– how to just be a friend.

an honest friend.

an equal friend.

a vulnerable friend.

a long-haul friend.

there are a lot of forces working deeply against friendship (not just cross-gender friendship but all forms–men with men, women with women, and across ages & differences, too.)

power. we know how to be under people or above people but rarely do we know how to live beside them. it’s a natural force of our Genesis 3 human-ness. often without thinking, we look for someone to control us or someone to control. if we feel “less than” or “more than” others it messes with real freedom. this is so unconscious for us that we don’t even know we’re doing it.

shame. sometimes we are scared to be fully known because if people really knew us we’re quite sure they wouldn’t want to be friends anymore. we give part of us but not all of us because full honesty is too risky. but honest sharing with a friend who can honor it brings one of the greatest rewards of friendship–the experience of grace. also, some people feel embarrassed that they never learned how to develop healthy friendships and it feels weird & awkward to be trying now. (it’s never too late, i know that for sure!)

independence. many have learned through damaging past experiences that “the only person we can really trust is ourselves.” and even if we don’t trust ourselves, we at least know what to expect. a “trust God and God alone (by yourself)” mentality is especially pervasive in christian circles.

fear. we don’t naturally like to make ourselves vulnerable . we don’t like to get hurt. and somehow we know we will if we get too close to another person. our natural tendency to avoid pain is always at play. i’ve lost a few friends along the way, and it hurts. a lot. but it was still worth it in the end because of what i learned through them. in cross-gender friendships, fear is even higher because for the most part people say it isn’t possible without sexual weirdness.

yikes, those are some strong forces working against us! when i look at this list, though, i have hope. i have seen it up-close-and-personal in my life & many others–healthy friendship is so possible! but much deeper than only my experience, these four things–power, shame, independence, and fear–are what Jesus calls us to break down so we can get to the better thing–love.

humility, grace, trust, and peace are all part of love and antidotes to power, shame, independence, and fear.

that’s really what friendship is–loving another human being more freely, more purely, more honestly, more fully. and being loved by another more freely, more purely, more honestly, more fully. it’s about loving and being loved.

and that, my friends, is scary stuff!

we’d much rather talk about almost anything else. and do most anything else.

and it’s probably why we need to focus on it the most.

i think a task for the body of Christ is to begin actively showing people how to be friends in all kinds of shapes & sizes. men with women, men with men, women with women. to break down systems of power and honor what it means to be equals, created in the image of God. to find ways to really heal from shame instead of just talk like we have and become more free & healthy human beings. to learn what it means to be interdependent instead of independent or codependent. to have courage to push through our inadequacies & fears and stumble & bumble into new ways of living together as friends. friends with God, with others, with ourselves. they are all mixed up together.

oh there are so many beautiful things to learn alongside each other!

what are you learning about friendship these days?

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ps: next post is part two and is a little more practical, but i wanted to get this out while it was swirling around in my head.

pss: my friend dan brennan is an advocate and teacher for sacred friendships. he continues to call people to break down the walls that divide us and bravely engage in deep, intimate friendship with one another. in april the first sacred friendship gathering centered on cross-gender friendships is happening in chicago; i feel privileged to be sharing there and would love for you to come be part of this important conversation! if you can’t attend but would like to help someone else have a chance to go, scholarships are greatly needed so that as many people as possible can be challenged to consider the practice of deeper friendship. also, they are pulling this off as a labor of love on a shoestring budget, so let dan know if you can help!

linear: never was, never will be

Posted on Jan 18, 2012 in healing, relationships, spiritual formation | 15 comments

* this post is part of the january synchroblog, a bunch of bloggers writing on the same topic. this month is being hosted by provoketive magazine and is centered around the theme of hope. the provoketive link list is at the bottom. that’s a lot of hope!

* * * * *

Even before I became a Christian I had the crazy idea embedded inside of me that life was supposed to be pretty clear and easy if you did certain things. Maybe it was growing up with a single mom who struggled and scraped and believing that “if I got a college education, it wouldn’t be like that” or “If you don’t rock the boat, you can keep everyone happy.” The message of “Do this that and you can get this or that” was engrained in me from early on, and this was long before I became a Christ-follower. I sort of think it’s human nature.

Once I made the leap toward Jesus in my early adult years, the message was actually more strongly reinforced, only with a little twist of adding “God” to it: “If you do these things, believe these things, memorize these things, God will _________.”

Really, this kind of thinking makes an assumption that life is supposed to look like this:

It’s ladder-like living where we keep moving forward and don’t look back. One rung after another after another, somehow expected to forget what’s behind us and keep pressing forward to what’s ahead. With enough faith, forgiveness, prayer, and fortitude, we’ll keep rising higher and higher and getting better and better. It’s formulaic and if you just do the right things, the right things will come together.

Yeah, it didn’t work so well for me. As much as I secretly long for “linear” my life was anything but. In fact, my life has always felt a lot more like this:

Look familiar?

About 16 years ago I heard a very wise woman named Jan Frank speak at a women’s retreat. I have no idea what she’s doing these days, but I will always remember this imagery. She shared that even though we long for life to be linear, and to be healed quickly from things in the past or negative messages about ourselves, it just doesn’t work that way. Rather, over the course of our lives we will continually hit our “stuff” over and over again, but each time at a new place.

The model she shared looked like this:

The spiral is bringing me hope right now. Sometimes longing and hoping and wishing and begging for life to be linear can be so frustrating. I don’t want to still be saddled with the same messages I have struggled with for years. The ones that all-roads-lead-to for me are “I’m not enough” and “I’m really on my own.” As much healing work as God has done with them, as much as I know they are not true, as much as I can put them in their proper place, they still show up in my heart and my head and relationships. Meanwhile, I keep consciously and unconsciously expecting them to be done, in the past, and happily moving up the next rung of the ladder.

But I am reminded, yet again, as this new year begins that life is so not linear. It never was and it never will be. I am going to hit my woundedness again, and again, and again over the course of my life, but each time at a little different place. Instead of expecting the messes to be gone and being angry at myself and God for not taking care of it as quickly as I’d like, I am learning to lean into God’s ongoing transformation in my life. I will continually bump into these core messages, especially during times of trial and challenge, and each time God will work to heal and restore yet another layer that needs tending to.

Linear expectations of ourselves, of God, of other people tend to lead to shame, self-hatred, and anger. I think a lot of our church experiences have subtly and directly taught us that linear living was possible. In this model, we always fall short and end up feeling bad about ourselves. It eventually leads to hopelessness.

Thinking that life is just a chaotic, crazy roller coaster ride with no rhyme or reason to it isn’t very hopeful, either.

Accepting the spiral-ness of life leads to freedom, hope, and peace. It lets God off the hook and helps us notice “Yep, there it is again, rearing its ugly little head, trying to teach me something” instead of being royally ticked that we’re still struggling. This infuses me with hope.

Hope that I’m not a total screw-up.
Hope that there’s a bigger story unfolding.
Hope that God is always at work, transforming, rebuilding, renewing, restoring.
No matter how many times I hit the same stuff.

Hope is remembering that every time I bump up against my weaknesses and painful parts of my story, it is at a new place, there to teach me something really good about what it means to be human in need of God’s help and hope in a messy, broken world.

Yeah, life is not linear. Never was and never will be.

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more hope here:

dreaming & making what could be, be.

Posted on Jan 16, 2012 in church stuff, dreams, equality, incarnational, the refuge | 11 comments

in honor of martin luther king, jr. day, i thought i would post a little excerpt about dreams from my book, down we go: living into the wild ways of Jesus. it was originally inspired by a post i wrote in 2007 for the refuge blog called “we have a dream”; then i modified it in 2009 for communitas collective & shared a re-dux in 2010 in honor of MLK day two years ago. last year, when i was writing the book, it went through another revision. each time i read it i am reminded that part of making what could be, be begins with dreaming.

however, the kingdom isn’t going to just drop out of the sky. we are going to have to be active participants in creating it. it is hard. it is uphill. it is against the grain. but it’s possible. and what Jesus challenges us to as his followers.

so here you go, some of my own little church-faith-life dreams, capital letters and all, from pages 85-87:

Making What Could Be, Be.

As a dreamer, I like to imagine what could be.

Despite some of my cynicism about church systems, I am still an idealist. Change is possible; otherwise I would have given up a long time ago. I am still foolish enough to think that our wild “God dreams” are possible. I think when Jesus said “Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10), he meant that the Kingdom was possible now. I also know it’s possible because I see it every day in small and beautiful ways. I see the marginalized, forgotten, neglected and abused finding love and hope through healing community.

For a lot of us, it’s hard to dream. Almost every time I challenge people to dream it stirs up fear and trouble. We’ve hoped before and had many of our dreams dashed, mocked and called unrealistic or impractical. Many have tried to make their dreams a reality in systems that rejected them, and they’ve lost a lot of hope. The thought of opening hearts back up again is too scary. Others are in the midst of living out dreams and are finding how hard they can sometimes be. Often we can think of all the reasons our dreams won’t work, so why even try?

But here’s why I think we should try. These Kingdom ways aren’t supposed to be a pipe dream, or an elusive, unrealistic and unobtainable idea that we know will never happen. Jesus’ ways of upside down living require imagination and hope. They require crazy people willing to live out what’s embedded deep inside their hearts, regardless of the cost. They require courageous women and men who risk their money, time and pride to go against the flow of the powerful status quo and create little pockets of love that reflect Jesus, rather than the world. They require humble disciples, followers of Christ, who try as best they can to heal the sick, feed the hungry, care for the poor, love the unlovely, and pass on hope in places where there is none. Most of all, these Kingdom ways require people with eyes to see more beauty and hope in the often ugly, messy, downward journey than on the predictable, comfortable upwardly mobile path.

The other night I was with some Refuge friends at our house talking about dreaming. Even though I want people to dream big, I also want people to dream small. To value simple ways we can move toward more of Christ’s love, life and hope in this world. I shared with my friends how many years ago I dreamed of the kind of community I am now part of—one that was inclusive, authentic and healing, and valued generosity, equality and the practice of love, above all. In my dreams, it looked completely different. Trust me, it was a lot prettier, easier, bigger and brighter. Yet, even though my original picture was different, the flesh and bones of what I had hoped for has come true. I’m experiencing it in real life. I am grateful but also not afraid to keep dreaming for more. I want others to have a chance to taste and see, too.

So I keep dreaming, trying to play my small part in the bigger story.

When I stop and allow myself to really imagine, I dream that we’d be people who took Jesus’ words seriously. We can’t just talk about it, but we actually have to be forgiving, loving, sacrificing and humble. I hope we are people willing to give away our stuff, care for the widows and orphans, die to ourselves, hug lepers, love our neighbors, lay down power and make peace with our enemies.

I dream that all people would feel valued, regardless of our differences. I hope we become people who refuse to let color, socioeconomics, gender, theologies, shapes, sizes, or social abilities get in the way of seeing the image of God and respecting each other’s worth, value and contribution to this world. I hope we will continue to find ways for women, men, white, brown, poor and rich to work equally and fully alongside one other as brothers, sisters, leaders and friends.

I dream that the divide between “us and them” will continue to crumble.

I dream that Christ-followers will form into an underground army of advocates, that we will stand with the marginalized, oppressed, poor and unlovely, and will risk our pride, position and power so that someone with none could get a little.

I dream that damage from the past and present will not paralyze us from living out who God made us to be; instead, we’d use our story to help another person.

I dream a whole bunch of us will find ways to create little pockets of love in places that desperately need them so that we will be known by the world as “those crazy people who never give up on the hurting, the lost, the oppressed and the outcasts.”

Never be afraid to dream.

these are some of mine. what are some of your dreams, no matter how big or small?